British Jazz

Hey come to Birmingham, there's loads going on here

A lot of recent British jazz is listed above. However, has been suggested a number of time in histories of British jazz, that it started to move away from a strong American influence just after World War Two and eventually showed enough independence of form etc to impress the ultimate critics, American audiences - having said that George Shearing slightly predates. Therefore it is necessary to remind of Humphrey Littleton (his Bad Penny Blues  can be heard in the Beatles' Lady Madonna), (my name sake) Ted Heath, and perhaps the most innovative British jazzer to that time, Tubby Hayes. However, there was a split between the innovative and the retro, dixieland jazz (subsequently known as trad jazz), where British jazz musicians wanted to resurrect the style and sound of 20's American jazz, e.g Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk. To a lesser extent Chris Barber  followed this route in the 50's but included a blues set (occasionally with genuine 30's American blues artists) and then a skiffle set (that where Lonnie Donegan came from and the seeds of British rock'n'roll).  The 60's had further splits; the Jazz Britannia series suggested young jazzers (e.g. Graham Bond, Georgie Fame) were forced to play electric transportable keyboards in jazz clubs, not being allow to play the house musician's acoustic  piano - then through absorbing R'nB (partly because the urging of audiences of young American servicemen)  played some of the earliest (blues based)  jazz rock. In the meanwhile there were those who wanted jazz but with minimal American sound, hence for instance the appearance of the previously mentioned Don Rendell and the young Ian Carr.  Big band arrangements were by the late 60's coming from Mike Westbrook - check out the double set of Westbrook's March Song with John Surman to the fore, and slightly later  Mike Gibb. One of the first British albums labelled jazz rock was Experiments In Pop by Gordon Beck. Free form or improv jazz came from a number of British musician, John Stevens (for straight Stevens, check out John Martyn's jazz blues folk rock of  Live at Leeds, for free jazz Stevens check out the Konnex released BBC Radio 3 recordings with Allan Holdsworth),  Fred Frith, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_jazz

provides far more detail, for instance I find I'm guilty of omitting Johnnie Dankworth and Ronnie Scott, to name but two.

However, I keep rolling back to jazz rock  and other jazz fusions. BTW if you want an example of musician exploring jazz possibilities and futures at the end of the 60's, check out John Surman's contributions to Mike Westbrook's March Song, John McLaughlin's  Extrapolation, his own belated issued album Way Back When, and the McLaughlin/Surman: Where Fortune Smiles, all recorded within 24 moths of each other. And then consider the progression that lead to his distinctively British sounding Road To St Ives recorded  in the 80's.

By the way Dick, if you need Acker Bilk records, they are quite common at thrift stores in the states. 

Sean Trane wrote: Dick Heath wrote:    In the meanwhile there were those who wanted jazz but with minimal American sound, hence for instance the appearance of the previously mentioned Don Rendell and the young Ian Carr.  Big band arrangements were by the late 60's coming from Mike Westbrook - check out the double set of Westbrook's March Song with John Surman to the fore, and slightly later  Mike Gibb. One of the first British albums labelled jazz rock was Experiments In Pop by Gordon Beck. Free form or improv jazz came from a number of British musician, John Stevens (for straight Stevens, check out John Martyn's jazz blues folk rock of  Live at Leeds, for free jazz Stevens check out the Konnex released BBC Radio 3 recordings with Allan Holdsworth),  Fred Frith, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_jazz provides far more detail, for instance I find I'm guilty of omitting Johnnie Dankworth and Ronnie Scott, to name but two.   Hey Dick, welcome aboard  Thanks, fancy seeing you here!!?? Sadly, it looks like their albums are not reissued at all, or just partly.... Would there be some special reason for this???  I suggest many reasons. Original record label defunct or so small can only reissue a limited number of albums on CD per annum (I guess labels like Ogen???) , parent label seeing little urgency on CD issues (Island Records was dreadful until bought out by WEA), master tapes lost or mislabelled (admittedly a rock band but T2 have this problem), musicians not wanting a reissue for various reasons (Miroslav Vitous sat on Warners' reissuing of Magical Shepherd - but let Wounded Bird issue it about 9 months later on CD*), people like us not making enough fuss/noise. Jon Newey, managing editor of Jazzwise magazine, tells me his editorial team rattled Warner's cage and as result two Back Door albums got issued - but there hasn't been a rush to reissue the others.   The above mentioned Experiments with Pops was reissued on CD by a small American label,  approx 40 years after it s release on vinyl in the UK.  The recovery of John Surman's 1969 recording Way Back When and apparently premier release, was down to Cuneiform  5 or so years ago   * Allan Holdsworth is legendary in vetoing the handful of live albums in the can - so it is a miracle that  3 plus a dodgy 4th on are on the market.

Edited by Dick Heath - 13 Jul 2011 at 3:41am

Michael Garrick's Sextet with Norma Winstone  in The Heart Is A Lotus

Moshkito wrote: Hi,   Brittish arts' history have a lot of moments when people experimented and found something and did something ... with music ... but honestly ... other than the early experiments with Soft Machine, in their early albums (post Daevid), it is hardly jazz ... as defined by the term and music, and sometimes I thought that too much of it was way too composed for my tastes ... and to me that tastes a lot of the tastes of jazz out of it.   The film scene in the mid to late 60's was fabulously free and experimental. The theater scene had its free days going as far back as the late 50's and the "angry young men" ... and music had its heyday in the late 60's ... only to give way to the commerciality of it all. The music lasted the least of these 3, by the way, mostly because the rock press was always eager to kill something they did not know or understand ... and even Syd Barrett screamed about that -- lest we forget! ... "... people have stood, and cheered ... something they did not understand!"   I guess that I like the freer forms of jazz a lot more than the structured stuff out there ... that sometimes simply sounds like another lounge lizard jazz wannabe band.   But yeah ... my ears are definitly twisted!

I'm not sure I read your text well or at least don't know what to make of it...

I like Nucleus, and Graham Collier. I picked up several of the re-issues on the BGO label. The John Surman archival release, Way Back When on Cuneiform is another excellent release.

Edited by StarThrower - 09 Mar 2019 at 1:18pm